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The Rhesus Chart

Charles Stross
Chapters (23)
  1. Cover
  2. Ace Books by Charles Stross
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Dedication
  6. 1.
  7. 2.
  8. 3.
  9. 4.
  10. 5.
  11. 6.
  12. 7.
  13. 8.
  14. 9.
  15. 10.
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  17. 12.
  18. 13.
  19. 14.
  20. 15.
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  23. 18.

Cover

Cover for The Rhesus Chart

Ace Books by Charles Stross

Ace Books by Charles Stross

SINGULARITY SKY

IRON SUNRISE

ACCELERANDO

THE ATROCITY ARCHIVES

GLASSHOUSE

HALTING STATE

SATURN’S CHILDREN

THE JENNIFER MORGUE

WIRELESS

THE FULLER MEMORANDUM

RULE 34

THE APOCALYPSE CODEX

NEPTUNE’S BROOD

THE RHESUS CHART

Title Page

Copyright

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

penguin.com

A Penguin Random House Company

This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

Copyright © 2014 by Charles Stross.

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-14028-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stross, Charles.

The rhesus chart / Charles Stross.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-425-25686-2 (hardback)

I. Title.

PR6119.T79R53 2014

823'.92—dc23

2013048131

FIRST EDITION: July 2014

Cover art by Mark Fredrickson.

Interior text design by Kristin del Rosario.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Version_1

Dedication

FOR HUGH AND BECCA

1.

PROLOGUE: ONE MONTH AGO

“DON’T BE SILLY, BOB,” SAID MO. “EVERYBODY KNOWS vampires don’t exist.”

I froze with my chopsticks halfway to my mouth, the tiny corpse of a tempura-battered baby squid clutched precariously between them, while I flailed for a reply to her non sequitur. We were dining out at an uncomfortably pricey conveyor-belt sushi restaurant just off Leicester Square—it was my treat, although I had an ulterior motive. Unfortunately I was in the doghouse for some reason. I didn’t know why, and it might not even have been related to the deed I’d brought her here to apologize for, but dinner showed every sign of turning into one of those rare but depressingly unfocussed marital arguments we had every few months. And the most prominent warning sign was this: the replacement of reasoned discussion with peremptory denial.

“We can’t be sure of that. I mean, doesn’t that take us right into proving-a-negative territory? The ubiquity of the legends, the consistent elements, all suggest to me that maybe we’ve been looking in the wrong place—”